Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome to Life in Limb, a podcast from Thrive magazine, all about living well with limb loss and limb difference. I'm Jeff Thiessen, publisher of Thrive magazine and your podcast host. My guest this episode founded an organization that supports the rehab and prosthetic needs of amputees in sub Saharan Africa. And that being the regions of the continent that lieutenant south of the Sahara. Tom Williams, he used to work as a strategist with top tier companies, but says his heart always leaned toward creating lasting social impact. And so now he's bridging that gap for non profit and for profit organizations to get people back walking, dancing and playing again, as he says. So, Tom Williams, welcome. How are you and where are you?
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Wow, what an introduction. Thank you, Jeff. So, yeah, my name is Tom, founder of stand, formerly Legs for Africa, and I'm speaking to you today from, from Wales. Yeah, in the hills of South Wales, uk.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Very nice. Yeah, thanks for joining us. I really appreciate it. And like I said in our kind of intro before we were recording, now I've known about your work for, for so long and it really is a pleasure to, to meet somebody that's making for amputee community, wherever that may be. So let's start with stand. Is it an acronym? What's the meaning behind the name and why the change from the original name, Legs for Africa?
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Wow. Jumping straight in the deep end. I like it.
So, yeah, I want to give a bit of a backstory about where Legs for Africa has come from because there's definitely been an interesting story arc.
I started the organization just over 10 years ago, back in 2013 after a trip to the Gambia. I was actually going for a bit of a difficult period of my life and a friend, an old school friend, was going through something similar.
And we said, hey, let's, we need to get out of here. Let's go on holiday. And we picked the Gambia. We fancied a bit of an adventure, something a bit different.
And on the first day of being there, we came, we met this beautiful family, the father. So the guy that we'd met was actually a chef in this restaurant that we ate. And yeah, we complimented the food and he said, if you like that, you'll love my mother's cooking. And invited us to his family's compound the next day. And as it happened, his mother's cooking wasn't quite as good as his. But we got to know the whole family and we really had an interesting and beautiful experience.
And the father of the family was an amputee. He'd lost his leg through diabetes.
And from getting to know him, I. I could see that he was not just experiencing a kind of physical trauma, but there was an emotional trauma there as well. Like, he had clearly been the breadwinner of the family and. And now he kind of relied on everyone to do most things for him. And I could see the strain that it put on the family and, and the community, and not from a prosthetics background myself. I said to the family, look, when I get back to the uk, I'll see what I can do about getting your dad a prosthetic leg. I don't know what the process is, but I'm willing to explore that.
So, anyway, there is one rehabilitation center in the Gambia, and it's a very small country on the west coast of Africa.
And. And we managed to get some pretty basic measurements of this chap's stump.
And from that I was able to find someone in the UK who was an amputee himself, he was a prosthetist, and he agreed to build prosthetic leg in his spare time and sponsored the materials. So a few months later, I was able to fly back out to the Gambia and deliver this leg. And at the time, it was just a.
A random act of kindness, for lack of a better word.
And on a personal level, for me, like, I always knew that. So this was Something nice was happening, something, you know, but. And I was holding this. This prosthetic, like, taking it to the Gambia, but it wasn't until actually turning up at this family compound, and we had the local prosthetist there and some minor adjustments needed to be made, but we got Paul walking, we got him standing up.
Yeah, I emphasize standing. We.
And it was just probably the most incredible moment of my life.
And I'm not even the one having a new prosthetic leg fitted, so I can't imagine how he felt, but for me, it felt so easy. All I did was connect two dots. Someone that needed something with someone that had something.
And I think that's the principle of how likes for Africa formed. It was about. We identified that there was a need, and particularly in the Gambia, they've got a massive problem with diabetes.
And.
Yeah, like diabetes and road traffic accidents. Diabetes is the main cause of amputation in the Gambia. Other countries that we're working in, and I can expand into that later, it's actually road traffic accidents.
But we then quickly realized that. I did. I realized that there was a large amount of prosthetic legs being thrown away in the UK and that Prosthetic legs are mostly modular. You've got a foot, you've got a pylon, you've got a knee if belong to an above knee amputee and a couple of adapters and the different manufacturers, these components are interchangeable.
So it was just like, whoa, okay, so no one's doing this already, like why not?
And it just felt like a no brainer.
Yeah.
Giving you a very long version of this story, but I'm going for it anyway. So for the first five or six years of operating, it was all about recycling legs, building relationships with rehabilitation centers. Started off in the uk, then Canada. We've got a representative in Canada, we've got a representative in the US and Europe.
Because it works. It's simple. We offer a collection service to rehabilitation centers.
They send us either dismantled legs or whole legs and then we work with groups of retired men to dismantle those legs into their components. We check their components for suitability and then we send them on to partnering and vetted rehabilitation centers, Sub Saharan Africa.
So we've only, we worked with that rehabilitation center in, in the Gambia to start with and we very quickly.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: Were.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: Able to provide them with enough components to fulfill their annual fitting capacity, which is, I think it's just over like fitting just over 100amputees a year.
So then we, we, we expanded into other countries.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: Tom, meanwhile, you left a corporate job or you were a strategist or working in management and brand development. So there had to be a personal decision there that I'm leaving that to this and the nonprofit sector. And you had talked about in something I read about you, that there was something that really resonated for you and, and is it that story you just told about Paul or was there something within you that I, I need to make this transition?
[00:09:10] Speaker B: There was a few things at play there.
Yeah. I was getting tired of the corporate world.
Profit or I mean I've never really been one that's, it's not, I, I've always, I want to earn enough money to get by, you know, I want.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: To.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: You know, simple things. It's about simple things for me. And so I enjoyed work in the yeah. Corporate world for the challenges that it, yeah. Offered. I like different, different projects to kind of get my, my, my hands into work, work, work, work out how best to do things. So yeah, that, that did serve me well prior to making the, the leap to not for profit.
And I was quite privileged to be able to basically I had my own company where I was able to just work like One or even two days a week. And that was enough to sustain me whilst I was able to grow the organization.
So I was a. It was about three or four years ago now.
Yeah, the year before COVID I was able to.
I was getting so tired of wearing these two hats. Like one hat was flying out to Dubai doing all this corporate stuff for like, cars and stuff, and I don't even like cars.
And then this other hat, it was like, oh, that guy that recycles prosthetic legs. So, you know, it was quite tiring to have these two very different hats. And the hat. That was the guy that recycles prosthetic legs. That was the. That was the. Really. The happy guy. Like, I enjoyed doing that because it.
Well, not just the act of recycling legs, but what it. What it meant. What it meant for the environment, what it meant for bridging the gap between people and communities that don't have access to these resources. Bridging that gap.
Yeah, like, that's what really made my heart sing. So I was able to grow the team to. There were six people. Basically, there were six people. And by this point we'd started kind of expanding and off acknowledging that rehabilitation isn't just about prosthetists having the right resources, physical resources, the components to get someone walking again. There's way more to it than that.
I'm not going to go into that because I'm still trying to answer your question.
Stand. So we, Lakes for Africa described what we did.
Yeah, it was very useful for talking to people that we were receiving our resources from, whether that was prosthetic legs or, you know, we're asking for money because we're a nonprofit.
Yeah. Legs for Africa don't need to do too much explaining about what we do. Yeah, I can fill in some gaps here or there, but as people like to say, it says what it does. It is on the tin.
But yeah, as we grew and we would grow and we were expanding our support into different services because we. We work with a lot of implementing partners and yeah, very integrated into different communities, whether that's amputee communities or the professional communities on the African side and on the global north side.
So, yeah, we realized that Legs for Africa isn't actually very empowering to the people on the African side.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: So evolution of. Of the name then, to be more reflective of.
[00:13:44] Speaker B: We want to be more reflective.
[00:13:45] Speaker A: Yeah, Yeah, I could see that in that name.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: Yeah. We also wanted to acknowledge that there's the, like, our responsibility, not just as a. Not for profit, but I think for any organization about this decolonizing narrative. And what is Legs for Africa saying?
I mean, it could be saying that the Global north are the gift givers and Africa is this passive receiver of aid.
So we had a really beautiful process which started probably just over two years ago now, where members of the team, we were starting to sort of notice that there is tension. Something wasn't quite right.
Project managers were acknowledging that their area of work wasn't being acknowledged, communicated about in the way that the typical Legs for Africa, recycling prosthetic legs. Because that was like our sort of primary narrative, but there's so much more going on.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: So in a sense, it was too charitable. Would that be a good description? It had that feel of charity.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, I think. Yeah, I think you're right. That Jazz. And.
And so we entered the mediation process. We had one of our trustees, who's got a lot of experience in mediation, hold this conversation for us as a group that lasted about nine months. And. And the rebrand was just one of the things. One of the quite a lot of things that came out of that. And I mean, it was a challenging period, but, boy, am I glad we did it. Like, the whole process has galvanized us as a team, and not just as. Because most of our team members. Yeah, we operate mainly from the uk, but we. As I mentioned earlier, we've got people that represented us around the world. Collection ambassadors. Like collection ambassadors.
But also our African stakeholders. And as I mentioned, the communities that we're part of, like, we really brought those guys into the conversation and had an incredibly.
Yeah, rich conversation where we got everyone's voices on the table and really had it got everyone heard. So stand. What does it mean?
There isn't an acronym there.
We've. I mean, we could throw up. We could say it means something, but no, it just means stand. To stand.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: Like, we.
When we were going through the rebrand process, initially, we wanted something with like, something that was. Had movement in it and felt that was quite empowering. But. But actually we. We discovered that to stand up is actually a really significant milestone on for someone's rehabilitation journey who has gone through limb loss. And with a tagline, we walk together.
Yeah. For me, that bridges. That's this. Bridging the gap with inequality.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: Thanks. I thought that was going to be a short answer, but I really appreciate the way that you. You gave us a very contextual understanding of what. What the organization does. So. And speaking to that. And you did mention team. I want to talk about that. That process almost like A flow chart and maybe just some, you know, key points in how.
So I'm a double arm amputee, but if I was a lower extremity amputee, the prosthesis that I was issued dispensed, you know, here in, here in Canada. How does it get from me to someone in the Gambia or another part of sub Saharan Africa? What is somebody knocking on my prosthetist door saying, you got anything laying around? And I don't mean to be dismissive of it, but how does that work?
[00:18:36] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question.
So, yeah, there's a, there's a big communications position here because we really want to be positioning ourselves within the prosthetics industry.
And our question to the prosthetics industry is, is it possible that the prosthetics industry can become a zero waste industry?
And I believe firmly that it can, and I'm optimistic that it can as well. And I think for it to do that, we need to have conversations right through the supply chain, manufacturers, suppliers, clinics, national health services, and then. And the individuals themselves, the users.
So we've kind of.
Yeah, accidentally or we, we've positioned ourselves as a, as, as a, I think a big part of that solution in how the prosthetics industry can become zero waste.
So we work with rehabilitation centers.
We don't usually go knocking on prosthetist doors.
I would love it if we could, but a lot of it's done through LinkedIn, building connections through LinkedIn and directly contacting rehabilitation centers.
And we also find that prosthetic limb wearers can sometimes be putting pressure on, on their prosthetist or clinic to be getting on board with the solution. Right. Because all they need to do is have a section, a tote box or something that they can put unwanted returned prosthetics dismantled in a box. And when that box is full, we just ask them to let us know. Through. Through. Yeah, there's a process on our website. It's pretty simple. Just let us know how many boxes you've got and the address and we'll arrange for a courier to, to pick it up.
[00:21:12] Speaker A: So when you say we here in Canada, there's a point person that, that they would connect with or, or directly with you.
[00:21:20] Speaker B: It would come directly to us.
So we, we would arrange the, the courier. Yeah, like that doesn't need to happen from, from Canada. And then we'll arrange for it to be collected from wherever the clinic is. And, and our collection hub is in Newfoundland. In Cornerbrook.
Yeah. So.
[00:21:44] Speaker A: And then the Componentry goes to like a central. Not fabrication, but almost defabrication. Disassembly.
[00:21:53] Speaker B: Yeah, right, exactly.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah.
[00:21:57] Speaker B: So, yeah, items will be dismantled and checked in Cornerbrook and then from there we'll arrange. Well, historically we've, we've arranged a shipment every 12 months from corner Brook and I. It's. Yeah, I, I think we're. We're currently rescuing about 300 prosthetic legs a year across Canada and across everywhere where we operate. I think we're at about 2,200 this year already.
And overall, since we've started, we're just over 19,000.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: Wow. How many countries do you draw from? Do you source componentry from?
[00:22:45] Speaker B: There's Canada, us, the UK and then Europe is a bit kind of sprawling, you know, I'm not going to list off all of the European countries, but yeah, I mean, mostly like West. West Europe. Yeah. Scandinavia as well.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: Okay, so then let's get back, you know, into Africa. And I would imagine that the landscape of prosthetic care and rehab services is maybe a bit different than that. What we would understand it to be here in, in our own country. And I would imagine there's a huge population of those that need that kind of service in Africa, so that comes with challenges, no doubt. And what are some of those, those barriers that Stan needs to overcome? And I mean, obviously accessibility and affordability and equipping process with the tools and materials they need. Is it more than that?
What's, what's the biggest hurdles?
[00:23:52] Speaker B: Yeah, okay. I'm smiling because I'm not happy about the situation, but I'm just trying to condense the really big answer into something that's smaller and yeah, I think to just draw on our, like, mission statement, which I can't remember what it is word for word now, but it goes something like that.
We, our mission is to make prosthetic devices more accessible whilst improving the quality of service that they, that people receive.
And actually it's not just about access to prosthetic legs, but more like holistic rehabilitation, the rehabilitation that people need.
And, and with that, it's, it's quite complicated. And another reason why we jump from Legs for Africa is we're not supplying to the whole of Africa. We're working in eight countries that are in Sub Saharan Africa and each one has their own unique challenges.
So we can't say one size or solution fits all.
So we work with each rehabilitation center and there's 13 of them across those eight countries and they've all got unique challenges. We understand.
We get an idea of what their annual fitting requirements are and they'll each receive an annual consignment from us. Oh, well, the aim is one, but it usually ends up being more.
And they each get a budget as well, because we want to be improving the quality of service and sometimes that means making sure the toilets are working or the fixing the leaky roof or whatever it might be. They might need a new oven or any type of machines and.
And whilst improving the upskilling staff as well. So that. That's another pro. Programmatic area that we're. We're working in.
But yeah, when it comes down to challenges for users.
Well, not necessarily users, because people that haven't necessarily been fitted with the prosthetic, like, oh, it's so complicated. Yeah. So there's just the environment as well.
[00:26:53] Speaker A: Like, I was going to ask you this, are you welcomed or is there resistance?
[00:26:59] Speaker B: We're very welcomed.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: Good.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: Yeah, we're very welcome.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: But that's not the problem.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: No, that's not the problem.
There's a lot of social stigma and I've got to be careful here. I'm not. I don't want to make broad, sweeping statements, but in a lot of communities, if someone has lost a prosthetic leg. Sorry, if someone's lost a leg, a lot of people believe that that's.
That's God's way of punishing them for a crime that they haven't committed yet.
And I've heard all. I've heard all sorts of variations of that, but it often means that people are further ostracized and families can be ashamed. So what tends to happen is people are hidden away.
And so there's something.
The project started in the Gambia and I remember when I first got there. I know, I remember there were lots of. I remember seeing lots of people, lots of amputees.
A lot of them were begging and. Yeah, now there's different amputee community groups there. There's an advocacy group, there's a women's banking group, there's a football team and there's also a community of amputee support, peer support volunteers that go out and meet, whether they've been newly amputated or they're about to or existing.
And there's a team of counselors as well in the Gambia. And this is really like.
I think the word is like desensitized is kind of helped normalize.
Yeah, yeah.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: Well, that's definitely an attitude note shift, you know, at minimum. And. And maybe it could be argued that that's, you know, the seeds of a cultural shift as well in terms of the, you know, bias and stereotype and assumptions that are made about.
Or as you said, you know, I guess it would be fate or destiny, I'm not sure. But when you know, the punishment aspect of it. Yeah, that's really interesting that you have to, to. To work with that alongside other challenges. I, I like what I had heard and read about, well, all of the pillars of what Stan does, but interestingly that the one pillar that talked about historically how the prosthetic profession and I don't think is. Is male dominated and I don't think that's exclusive to Africa. I think that's a worldwide situation. So one of your pillars back to that is training female prosthetic technicians, if I have that right.
[00:30:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:09] Speaker A: You know, of course we, we all here in Canada talk diversity and equity and inclusion and how important that is and, you know, speak very high level globally about that. But more female professional professionals in the sector. It's crucial for you and Stan for, for several reasons. Right. And I'd like you to just to. To address why that's important, why you're leaning into that quite heavily.
[00:30:35] Speaker B: Great question.
We believe it makes healthier work places, work environments when there's a better balance of males and females than just fully males.
I think there's one. I think there's also the piece about making the re. Making safe spaces as well for female amputees that are accessing the rehabilitation services.
Having a prosthetic leg fitted can be an incredibly intimate process.
And yeah, so there's a piece around making that process safer and feel safer for women. And we're starting to get pretty good now collecting data on patients that come through our partnering centers.
And it looks like about two thirds of patients are male and yeah, remaining female.
And it's not entirely clear why that is.
It's quite likely that men are more accident prone.
But yeah, I'm coming from a place of assumption there, but yeah, what if women didn't actually feel safe coming into these places? So, yeah, there are lots of reasons why we're investing in women to get into the prosthetic sector and it's not ourselves that provide the training.
We offer training bursaries. And so we're sending women to tatco, which is one of the two prosthetics universities in Africa, the others in Togo, and I don't know how many we've got currently in play in, that are currently studying, but we've had the best part of 15 now that have what's the word I'm graduated.
And then they're now in placement.
Number of them are in centers that we've got that we're already working with and some are working with different centers.
So. Yeah, and there's also a bias in the, in the like introduction, not introduction. What's the word I'm looking for when we, when we bring the. Bring ladies on.
There's a strong bias towards ones that have been affected by limb loss.
So yeah, it's a very successful project.
[00:33:55] Speaker A: Yeah, commendable. That's again a great, great pillar of all the work that you do want to kind of. We move to the end of our chat. I want to get back to the visionary side of things. The, the, the big, big question. And you had talked about the mission and this question speaks to that a little bit. And, and I think that you know, I understood in that mission that stand someday hopes to be redundant and, and not needed. And that's a big aim. That's a really huge game. I mean that everyone would be served as they're needed. I mean that's, that's not even happening here in, in Canada. There are still affordability issues and amputees that are not getting the prosthetic componentry that would be most appropriate for them. So what's the plan Tom? I mean how are you going to do that?
[00:34:48] Speaker B: I think it's healthy for any not for profit organization to try and put themselves out of business to try to fulfill their mission and vision to a point where they're not needed anymore. And yeah, you could say well like recycling prosthetic legs, that's not.
Yeah. Can understand how someone might say that that's not sustainable but for us that's not the end goal. It's the best solution that we've currently got to addressing a problem.
But just that very act of enabling rehabilitation centers with these resources can possibly create a market where manufacturers, suppliers can go in and offer a service that is affordable to the local communities.
But yeah, recognize we need to keep our fingers on the pulse because times are changing.
A lot of these components now are becoming more electronic. We're seeing more knees and feet are going to start becoming more electronic and they're going to be talking to one another.
They're going to become more affordable so people National Health Service is going to be able to afford that and we as it stands we can't recycle the electronic items.
So I'm not too sure what's going to really happen there. But the best thing we can do is know that it's coming. We're in the process of developing a low cost energy storing foot and this is one of our areas of research and development. We're working with different groups to develop different low cost solutions that can be manufactured domestically and that would be great. We're exploring a few different options at the moment. There's a, We've just completed a successful trial on 50 patients with this energy storing foot that I spoke about.
So that's going to be scaled up in 20, 25 to 200 people.
And yeah, this, there's something about the word sustainable sustainability which I don't really like.
I mean, I like sustainability, don't get me wrong, but I hear it used out of context a lot of times. Not much things are really sustainable, nature sustainable, but most things humans do isn't. So I believe we can, we can aim to move towards sustainability, but to really get there, truly get there is a very difficult thing to do.
But nonetheless, I think we should strive for it.
[00:38:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I'm hearing what you're saying. Important to keep a lens on it and not, not back burner it, so to speak. I guess speaking a form of sustainability. Last question to you. How do we Canadians, end users, us amputees, our practitioners, how can we help stand?
[00:38:30] Speaker B: Yeah, love this question.
I'd say head over to our website Stand ngo and there are a few ways that we invite people to engage with us.
If you've got a prosthetic leg that you no longer need, we would love to receive it. So there's a, there's a page that like, yeah, contact us through that if you believe that your prosthetist or rehabilitation center isn't on board with our program.
We would love you to put a bit of pressure on them. No, just have a conversation. Yeah. And please direct them our way.
And we love it when people do some fundraising events for us.
We've, we've just recently had a lady, she walked up Kilimanjaro for us. She, she lost an arm and a leg in a rail accident a few years ago. She was, she's a British lady and she's just raised just closer £20,000.
So yeah, we absolutely love it when the community do, do fundraising events for us. So but yeah, please head over to our website, Stan ngo. We've also got a docu series where we, yeah, like we've got some beautiful footage of what happens behind the scenes and, and there's an opportunity to meet some of the incredible people that we, we work with and support. So yeah, Please sign up to our docu series.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: Yeah, you're reading off my script here. I did want to make sure our listeners know about that. It is really powerful stuff and it highlights not just what, what Stan does in the clinic, but how that translates into real life for people. As amputee brothers and sisters, we know the importance of that work from our practitioner. So really well done. Worth the watch. Please, please check them out again at Stand ngo.
And with that, Tom, thanks so much. This was so insightful and giving us a perspective on your life and how you came to hear and the work that Stand is doing. I really hope we here at Thrive can get even more behind that in promoting your cause and supporting it. So thanks again.
[00:41:07] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks, Jeff. I really appreciate you giving me a voice and helping get this story heard. And yeah, I know you've been sharing our work for a good number of years now, so yeah, I really appreciate the ongoing support.
[00:41:23] Speaker A: Our pleasure. So with that, this has been life and limb. Thanks for listening. You can read about others who are thriving with limb loss or limb difference and plenty more at ThriveMag CA and you'll find our previous podcast episodes episodes there as well. Until next time, Live. Well.
